


Promises

by Isis



Category: Lunar Chronicles - Marissa Meyer
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 20:04:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3823042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why Fateen came to New Beijing to be Dr. Erland's assistant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promises

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raktajinos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raktajinos/gifts).



> Thank you for such a thought-provoking prompt! I had not given a second thought to Fateen until I saw your letter - and once I read it, I could not get her story out of my head.

"Are you sure you have enough food for the journey?" said Fateen's mother, for what must have been the fifth time that morning. "You should take some extra bread, just in case."

Fateen pushed away the foil-wrapped package her mother held out. "I have plenty of food, Ummi. I can buy more along the way if I run out."

"I don't want you wandering around the oasis towns by yourself. If you must buy food, ask one of the caravan mothers to go with you."

"Yes, Ummi."

"Do you promise?" Her mother's voice was stern, though her face was soft and affectionate as she looked at her eldest daughter. Promises in their house were sacred. Their family kept their promises.

"I promise."

"You have your portscreen? I want you to call us as soon as you get to Cairo."

Of course she had her portscreen. It was a stupid question. But Fateen understood that her mother was anxious. Even though all of the Farafrah children began going to the secondary school in Cairo when they turned twelve, she would be the first of her parents' children to make the trek. It was not a long journey, but it was a slow one on the desert track that destroyed all but the hardiest of vehicles. Some people even took camels, saying that at least animals didn't break down when they got sand in their gears. She wouldn't be back to visit until the end of the term in June, five months from now, and although her father sometimes went to Cairo for business, the school discouraged parents from visiting first-year students during the term.

"Fateen? You will call?" prodded her mother when she didn't answer immediately.

Fateen nodded obediently. "Yes, Ummi."

"I want to go to Cairo!" wailed Lila. 

"You're too young, silly," said Nabi. "You're not even old enough to go to school. I get to go next."

"Not unless you stop playing portscreen games with Fari and Husam all the time when you're supposed to be doing your homework," said Fateen, poking her little brother in the shoulder. "I heard the teachers are going to make you take your last year of classes over again."

"They did not! Fateen, you're lying! Ummi, she's lying!" Nabi's face went red and he started hitting Fateen's leg with his fists.

"Don't hit your sister," said their mother sharply, and she grabbed his fists and pulled him away from his target. "Fateen, you shouldn't tease him."

"I'm sorry, squirt," said Fateen, and she leaned down awkwardly to give him a hug. Both of their parents were tall, and just that year she'd shot up four inches. Now she towered over eight-year-old Nabi, and their family doctor had predicted she was going to be even taller by the time she finished growing.

Immediately he pulled away from their mother to hug her back. "I'm sorry, too."

"I'm sorry, too!" yelled Lila, and ran over on her chubby legs to join in the hug. She was only five, and of all her family, Fateen knew she'd miss Lila most of all. By the time she came back in June Lila would be so much bigger, so changed. Then after the break she'd go back to school for another five months, and Lila would be even more changed when Fateen came home the next time. And on and on for six years – and then there'd be University, and even longer absences from Farafrah. The worst thing about going to school in Cairo, she felt, was that she was going to miss seeing her baby sister grow up.

The netscreen on the wall chimed, and their mother looked over at it. "Time to go to the square. Fateen, are your bags ready?"

"They're on the porch. Abbi helped me carry them out before he went to work." She looked at her mother. "Is he coming back to see me off?"

"Is who coming back?" said a voice from the door. She breathed a sigh of relief to see her father smiling down at her. She loved his smile, big teeth flashing white in his dark face. He was not only the tallest man in Farafrah, he was the darkest, too. "Of course I can't let my big girl go off to Cairo without seeing her off."

They all went down to the square together, even little Lila. Nabi carried Fateen's smallest bag, she carried her next smallest, and her father carried the two largest. The place was bustling with her school friends and their families, everybody embracing, laughing, crying.

Her mother was crying, too, though she tried to hide it. "I know you're going to be the best student in Cairo," she said, hugging Fateen fiercely. 

"Of course she is," said her father, stepping in to give his own farewell hug. "Isn't our girl the best student in Farafrah, eh?" He beamed with pride. It was true, she got the highest marks of anyone in the whole school, of boys and girls both. But of course Cairo would be much bigger than the small school in their oasis village. The teachers would be better. She knew she'd have to work harder.

"I want you to call home every week," said her mother. "Promise me you will, Fateen."

"I promise."

Nabi tugged at her skirt. "And I want you to bring me a gyrocopter from Cairo when you come back! A green one!"

She laughed, kissed him on the forehead. "I promise, Nabi."

It was the first promise Fateen ever failed to keep. But it wasn't for lack of trying.

* * *

It all happened so quickly. One week her call home was filled with the usual news; Ummi had sold a large painting to a tourist from the European Federation, Nabi had done well on an exam. "Oh, and there's something strange going around," added her mother. "Bassam the shopkeeper broke out in blue splotches a few days ago, and now he's too ill to open the store. His daughter came from Kharga to run the store while he's in the clinic. The doctors think the caravan must have brought the germs along with their trade goods." 

The next week her father's face on her screen looked as though it had aged ten years, his dark skin gone gray and muddy. "Your mother..." he began. Then he started to cry.

"Abbi, what is it? What happened to Ummi?"

He swallowed, visibly got control of himself. "There's an illness going around. Something new, something the doctors have never seen."

"Last week, Ummi said Bassam came down with blue spots," Fateen said, remembering.

He nodded somberly. "He was the first. And it is very bad when the shopkeeper gets sick, because everybody goes to him to buy things. The doctors think he was sick even before he showed any signs of it, and passed it on without knowing."

Her mother had gone to the shop, and come home with chickpeas, potatoes, and blue spots. Fateen listened numbly as her father's shaking voice recounted how her illness had progressed. Her baby sister Lila had come down with blue spots the next day, and that very afternoon had become wan and listless. She had begun to cough up blood that night, and in the morning she was barely breathing. Her mother cradled her in her arms until she was still; by that time, she herself was beginning to feel weak, and the death of her youngest child was an emotional blow that she couldn't recover from.

"Yesterday," said her father, blinking tears from his eyes. He couldn't continue, but his loss was clear from his stricken face.

Fateen was sobbing now, too. "Why didn't you call me then? Why didn't you call me when she first got sick, I could have ridden out –"

"No!" His voice was sharp. "Everybody here is sick. You're safe in Cairo."

"But Abbi –"

"Stay in Cairo, Fateen. Study hard. Make us proud." He cut the connection, but not before Fateen saw the dark patch on his neck, a faint blue sheen on his deep brown skin. 

There was no question in her mind that she had to go to them, even though her father had warned her to stay away. Maybe if the blue splotches had just begun to appear on his skin, she could get home in time to nurse him. She'd wear a mask so she wouldn't breathe in the germs. And Abbi hadn't said anything about Nabi – he'd need help with her brother, who was a rambunctious handful at the best of times. It was the end of May, almost the end of her school term. She'd already bought the green gyrocopter for Nabi, a disk-shaped toy the size of her hand that rotated fast enough to hover and would dip and swoop on command. She was at the top of her class – surely the teachers would understand that she had to go back to see what was left of her family. They'd let her take the term-end exams later, they must. She had to go back to Farafrah now.

The gyrocopter went into a bag with some food taken from the cafeteria and a change of clothes. She took two masks from the science lab, one for her and one for Nabi, and put them into the bag as well, then hid it all under her bed in the girl's dormitory. She made sure she was the last in the shower, and lingered in the dormitory when everyone went off to the cafeteria for breakfast. When nobody else was in the room she retrieved her bag and slipped out.

She had not even reached the front gate of the school compound when a hand grabbed her by the shoulder. "Fateen. You'll miss breakfast." Then, into his comm: "It's all right, Chara, I found her."

It was Mr. Walid, one of the school administrators, a big man with a gray beard. "I have to go home," she told him. 

"You'll be going home in two weeks. The term's not over yet." He gave her a kindly smile. "Come, come, school's not that bad, is it?"

"Let me go!" she demanded, trying to wrench free. "My mother has died! My father has blue spots! I have to go help take care of Nabi!"

His smile disappeared abruptly. "Which village are you from?"

"Farafrah oasis. Please!"

"Oh, my dear girl," said Mr. Walid. "You haven't been watching the news, have you – of course you haven't, you're what, twelve, thirteen? Oh, my dear girl."

He took her to the school office and sat her in front of a netscreen where she watched, stunned, as drone cameras scanned across the deserted streets of her village. A woman's voice described the extent of the epidemic, the horrific symptoms that baffled all the doctors, but Fateen had already gone numb. The narration washed over her as though it were in another language.

"Nabi," she choked out. "My little brother. Don't you see, I have to go to him. Everyone else is dead!"

Mr Walid shook his head. "Even if there was anything you could do, you can't get there. No caravans are running to the west. Farafrah is in quarantine."

"You mean, Farafrah has been abandoned." Now she was starting to get angry. "Were you going to tell us? I'm not the only student here from Farafrah."

"Fateen, we only found out ourselves on this morning's newscast. We made an announcement at the start of breakfast – which you would have heard, if you'd been there instead of trying to run away," he added pointedly. Then his voice went gentle and soft. "I am so, so sorry for your loss. But you have to understand, there is nothing you can do to help."

He was wrong, she thought as she marched grimly to her first class. There _was_ something she could do. And as she took her seat in the hushed classroom, seeing the tear-streaked faces of her childhood friends around her, she started planning how she would do it.

* * *

By the time Fateen graduated from secondary school – still at the top of her class – the disease that had killed her family and devastated her hometown had been given a name: letumosis. It had destroyed many other villages in the African Union, and a few isolated cases had been seen in other countries as well. But there was no explanation for how virulently it spread and how quickly it killed. 

She attended the University of Cairo, studying biology and human anatomy. By then, letumosis had spread throughout the world, though fortunately outbreaks were controlled by immediate quarantine, and it was rare for a community to suffer the destruction of those first villages in the African Union. Naturally she chose to go to medical school in New Beijing; the Eastern Commonwealth was far from where she'd grown up, but Emperor Rikan sponsored the best-funded and most-respected research on letumosis on Earth. If a cure was to be discovered, it would be discovered in New Beijing.

And in her final year, Fateen was selected – one of a small group of the very best students at the New Beijing University of Medicine – to assist the renowned letumosis researcher, Dr. Dmitri Erland, who had a laboratory at the palace itself.

* * *

Fateen's portscreen chimed, and she checked the message. The latest subject from the cyborg draft had arrived, and she was needed in the examination room. When she apologized to the young emperor for having to leave him, he looked startled. "With Dr. Erland gone, I just thought maybe it was over," he said.

"Dr. Erland may be a traitor, but there are still a lot of people here who believe in what we're doing." _Like me._ "We won't quit until we've found a cure."

"You're doing great work here," the emperor's chief adviser told her. "The crown appreciates all the advances that have been made already in these labs."

"We've all lost someone to this disease," she said as she slipped the portscreen back into the large pocket of her lab coat. As she did so, her fingers brushed the familiar disk of Nabi's gyrocopter. It had come with her from the secondary school to the university, from Cairo to New Beijing. It was the promise she hadn't been able to fulfill, and she kept it with her, always, to remind her of why she had said what she did to Emperor Kaito. 

She would not quit until she found a cure. It wasn't for the emperor she was doing it. It was for Farafrah, for all of Earth. It was for her Ummi and her Abbi, for Lila and Nabi. It was a promise.

**Author's Note:**

> Farafrah is, canonically, the place where letumosis first appeared on Earth. On our earth, it is an actual oasis village in Egypt. 
> 
> "Fateen" is an Arabic name meaning "clever, smart."
> 
> The dialogue in the final section is verbatim from _Cress_.


End file.
